In The Dark Of The Night

It has recently come my attention that, considering I'm an avid beader and I'm ALWAYS making SOMETHING, I really don't own that much of my own work. Now that, readers, is a sad thing, as an artists should still own some of her own work. Besides, what better way to promote your work than by wearing it out? :D

Confession: I love Goldstone, especially blue goldstone. :D So when I found a HUGE collection of Blue Goldstone on my new favourite beading website, Cranberry, I just HAD to have the big one. Yep, that one right there *clicks "Add to Cart"* :D Match that with some 6mm round Blue Goldstone beads from Empire Beads, and I knew I was going to be making another of my Elegant Elements cuffs...

There wasn't too much thought behind this one. It just...WAS. Apparently, this cuff was meant to be and I was just the vessel through which it was made. Gotta love it when that happens :)

I did, however, have to use my brain for some things. Like which seed bead colours to use around the cab, ie, what went with what. THAT was difficult. I had about 4 different versions of blue that each went perfectly with the Blue Goldstone and really brought it out (not made it so dark-I didn't want it to look black), yet didn't go with each other. I finally settled with silver-lined Montana Blue, silver, and black, with the faintest hint of S/L light sapphire (I think 1 round in the end).

THE CLASP: Well, that was what this piece seemed to tell me that it wanted to be different from the rest. So it features a double clasp, which I'm quite happy with :D

What to call it? The name came to me while I was beading this cuff while watching Disney's Anastasia one night on my tiny TV next to my bed. The scene where Rasputin is singing "In The Dark Of The Night" while planning to kill Anastasia came on, and the light bulb came on in my head! I knew exactly what I wanted to call my cuff. Blue Goldstone is the darkest blue I've ever found, it's always reminded me of the night, and the darkest time of the night. So that's what this cuff became: In The Dark Of The Night. Which also sets it apart from the others (that I've made and that are still in my head), as they all have names that all start (or will start) with the main colour of the cuff.

I've already worn her 3 times (bit late with posting pictures haha) and can I just say, she is AWESOME :D I love having my own jewellery I've made :)

In other news, this is the latest collar I've been working on (and apologies for the dodgy photo, Blue Goldstone is very hard to photograph without natural light). I've done a bit more on it since this photo, and there shall definately be a blog post about it when I'm done :D

Happy beading all!
Meg

Scrolling through the inner Workings of a Cuff pattern

I don't often do bead patterns. Especially peyote stitches patterns. Have you tried them? Following the picture pattern always does my head in. BUT when there's a word pattern, I can survive.

However, when Ann of FrancescasFancy on Etsy asked for some people to test drive some patterns/kits she had designed, I saw it as the perfect opportunity to develop this skill of reading a pattern. So I put my hand up, got sent the kit, and got to work. :D

It was a very interesting pattern to work through. I started to see the pattern come through quite quickly, and it was fun trying to work out as I went where the repeats in the design were happening. It was a very clever design.

Another great thing about doing this for Ann was that in the kit she sent me she had included delicas (cylinder beads) as the beads to use for the pattern. And my goodness WOW! I had only ever used round seed beads, and I had had some problems when doing large peyote stitched-pieces that my tension with these beads was a bit out in some places (I like to pull hard it seems...). But not with delicas! I can pull the thread like normal and it pulls all the beads together into nice locked-in rows, and it's STRAIGHT! :D :D Can't even begin to describe how excited I was to discover this.

So ever since then I've been slowly purchasing the odd packet of delicas to add to my stash. :D


So there you have it. I finished it (around my Europe trip lol), sent it off, she photographed it and listed it and sent it back and now it's part of my VERY small self-made jewellery collection. She said she couldn't believe how small my wrist was when she opened the box and saw how small I'd made the bracelet (still enough for two repeats of the main pattern)! Haha

She has named it the Scroll Works Bracelet pattern (hence the play on words in the title of this blog post ahaha), and it is one of many wonderful designs availble for you to buy and bead in her shop (I really recommend trying this one out!). Check them all out, they're awesome!

And while you're there, take a look at her Green Dragon Bracelet - Baby Dragon Fantasy Beaded Cuff. It is absolutely amazing and SUCH a clever design!

Happy beading y'all!
Meg

Lime Spider

I had last week off Uni due to Easter. It was a glorious 10 days indeed. I worked, and watched movies, and SLEPT IN, and did some good ol' study (and now I'm back at Uni and I wish I were still on holidays... :P). A nice break.

And what would a break be (or any day for that matter) if I didn't do any beading? :D As a study procrastination, I created the following:

Allow me to introduce to you "Lime Spider!" She's the next in my Elegant Elements Cuff Collection.
This cuff features a large cat's eye cabochon matched with the same type of beads I used in Red Beauty, but obviously in lime green this time. For this cuff I decided to use black as the background this time (I'm aiming to use neutral colours for the background in all the cuffs, except perhaps one...), and I think it gives it a funky, sassy feel. I'm very happy with the results.

You can see that, when the cuff bends, you can slightly see the pale green suede I beaded on underneath. At first I wasn't happy about this, but then after a while I decided I liked it. It's just a hint of green and I think it gives a nice effect...

The beauty of using cat's eye cabochons or beads is the way it reflects light. I was quite facinated with the textures within the colours of the cab depending on the angle of the light that shone on it. Away from direct light, it's a quite dark green, but shine some light on it and these playful lines of light green and lime start to appear. It was for this reason I had diffuculty deciding what colour green I should use to bezel the cab. If you look closely at Red Beauty's cab, I used three different types: a light transparent red, then a dark transparent red after a few rounds, and finally finishing with a silver-lined dark red. I wanted to keep this the same with all the cuffs. So in Lime Spider I finally decided on lime transparent, then dark transparent green, before finishing up with a silver lined dark green. I think it works well. Finishing with a silver-lined round of seed beads seems to give the cab a hint of brightness, which I had noticed with Red Beauty as well. This effect will DEFINATELY be kept constant in future cuffs in the collection.

I'm still playing around with the clasps on these cuffs, so while this one is quite similar to that in Red Beauty, it still has a few differences. Firstly, because Lime Spider is shorter in length than Red Beauty (it currently actually fits me, can you believe it?!), the beaded band that connects the toggle loop to the actual cuff had to be longer. I'm happy with how this clasp looks, but in future I feel that the band should be wider (thoughts?), as the cuff itself is quite wide.
I had also been recently reading through some beading books/mags/websites/etc (AGAIN :P) and I kept seeing an interesting type of clasp come up again and again, where the peyote loop almost looked embellished. Finally I discovered that it involved using two sizes of seed beads. So here it is!

(see, told you it fits :P)

I used a different kind of suede than that of Red Beauty, and so this one feels even more soft on your skin! It feels very nice, may I just say. :)

And of course, everyone loves free stuff, so here's the free pair of matching earrings that come with the cuff.

So there you have it: Lime Spider, the second installment to the Elegant Elements Cuff Collection. Hope you enjoy her!

Oh, study break's now over, back to work... Y'know, I haven't beaded for a week just so I can't get distracted with how that wonderful braelet is looking so far, how nicely that collar is coming together, how absolutely gorgeous that pendant will be if I can just allow myself to finish it... (Stop it Meg, you're getting ideas :P) Let's just say I'm having withdrawals again...

Happy beading!
Meg

Winter Wonderland...in the middle of Summer...

Ok ok, I know this is a bit late, but I'm writing to you today about The Etsy Bead embroidery Guild (EBEG)'s  first Bead Fest- "Winter Wonderland" (a bit stange for me, as I'm currently in the middle of Summer here Down Under). All the entries were submitted by January 1st, and may I just say that they're all absolutely WONDERFUL entries. :D You can view them all on our team blog. Please take a moment to head on over and check them all out. :)

(collage of all our pieces)

And now I'd like to talk to you about the thoughts and ideas behind my piece- Winter's Fingerprints.

I suggested the theme "Winter Wonderland" for the Bead Fest, and when the team voted, most of us voted for this one. Which was sort of perfect for me, as I now had an excuse to make a piece for Winter for my "Season's collection," to go with my Autumn piece. I was asked to find an inspiring picture and give a description of the theme. As I was trying to find a suitable image on Google, and writing my description, I kept coming across snowflakes. I think they're even mentioned in the description I gave. And suddenly, snowflakes were all I could think about...

It is said that each and every snow flake is different; each is an individual. This thought got me thinking... I was studying for a biology exam at the time, and we'd done a huge section on genetics. Genetics, huh? Genes, inheritance, all the things that make us different, individual. And I thought of our fingerprints: how each is different; each is an individual. You cannot find a single finger that has the same print as another finger, not even on your own hand (I bet you just looked :P ). Pretty amazing!

I knew I wanted to make a necklace, that much was clear. And as I was thinking about snowflakes and fingerprints, ideas started to flash across my mind. What if I made a whole heap of snowflakes...joined them together...like so... gradual size decrease...that one can be the fanciest...I'll have to research this...like a collar, almost!!! (and there you have it, my crazy brain in thought process :P ) I sketched a basic design and went back to studying.

This was an unuasual piece in that I had decided the name of it well before I'd even begun stitching, something I don't usually do. I love giving my pieces names, it makes them so much more alive and special, and person. For this one, it had to be something to do with Winter. And snowflakes. Fingerprints. Snowflakes. Individual. Special. Different. Could Mother Nature have her own fingerprints? Hmm... Mother Nature's fingerprints. Snowflakes. Mother Nature's snowflakes. Winter's snowflakes. Winter's fingerprints. Aha! "Winter's Fingerprints." It fit perfectly, even if I hadn't even cut out fabric or picked my colour pallette. It was going to be perfect.

I did  a lot of research on this piece. I had no real idea what a snowflake could look like. And I wanted the biggest one, the "focal," if you like, to be the most special, fanciest one. So I set out to find the most beautiful and appealing (well, to me) snowflakes online that I could. Here was the inspiration for the big one (the latter is also shown on the right):

I love this one, it's just magical. :)

I came across more snowflakes, some of which were inspiration for the others-

And then after about 2 or 3 snowflakes I couldn't find any that I thought were absolutely brilliant that were, at the same time, simple enough to be able to be stitched at a small scale. So I started trying to make up my own. Which I found to be rather difficult after a while, because I couldn't make them really complex looking because there just wasnt enough ROOM, and there's only so many tiny snowflakes you can bead all differently before they'll begin to start looking the same. So it's a good thing I found I only needed to make 5 in all...

 (close up's of each side)

Snowflakes are typically displayed/shown/photographed on black, to show it up most clearly.  So this is what I did here: beading on black material, yet not filling in the background, to give an impression of the snowflae being momentarily "caught" on the fabric. The largest one was big enough that I could cut around it's whole shape proerly, but the smaller ones were not big enough for this. So I settled for cutting them out in hexagon shapes.

I chose a very simple colour pallette: opaque white, metallic silver, pearlized/milky white, and silver lined clear (silver). I wanted to make it simple to show up the snowflakes properly. But it wouldn't be truely Winter if there wasn't the faintest hint of blue, now would it? And this comes in in the attachments between the snowflakes, and in the ribbon, which finished off the piece.

I used 4 different ribbons in finishing: pale grey, white, silver and pale/ice blue. The clasp is a simple toggle. This finishing is quite simple as I wanted to keep the magic of this piece in the snowflakes; the magic of Winter. I almost added a fringe, I'd always intended to have a fringe, and lots of bling. I even went and bought the beads for the fringe! But then I found it didn't need one. It's beautiful as it is: just snowflakes.

And there you have it: Winter's very own Fingerprints; the snowflakes that will never melt. :D

Keep beading!

Meg